New York Dolls

btw, Alice Cooper and the Dolls are two of my favorite bands, I'm surprised I didn't notice this thread the first time around. And yeah Cooper had the better singles, but I could never ever choose between the two.

(which guy in the clash?)

(haha Pat Benatar = OK by me)

Thrilled that DavJoh finally made some money, although it figures it would come from extending "Stranded in the Jungle" into a full act.

>i don't think joe strummer played much gtr on their records tho

What?!? All that Telecaster dub-scratching/powerchord mania is him! Jones handled the Mott the Hoople lead lines and harmonic counterpoints. Both totally classic, as was Steve Jones, who merged Ramones chainsaw with Chuck Berry boogie (well, so did Eddie and the Hot Rods) to make the Pistols (dare I say it?) swing!

anyway, they had their moments, sure. "Frankenstein" kicks ass. But I absolutely can't stand Johnny Thunders (even though So Alone was one of my desert island discs in college - I've done a complete 180 on that fucker for some reason)

"...these jerks who will ultimately pull no more weight that to make the world safe for Motley Crue, whose sole function of note during their collective professional tenure will be as Malcolm McLaren's first test barrel of monkeys..."

Maybe Johansen's lyrics turn you off? If so, you ought to hear the wacky Actress demos from '71 or whenever (been bootlegged and was pressed on LP by the Italian label Get Back in 2000 or so). With Johnny Thunders on lead vocals, they were a very different thing. It's almost Electric Eels-like.

for the record, I don't like the Pistols either (and prefer the Dolls anyway)

As if that's a bad thing! I remember now why Meltzer has been a bore for so long.

to be honest though, Too Fast for Love still totally rocks, I'll give you that. It's almost punk in places.

Man I'd kill to hear The Jet Boys

'Chinese Rock' was a song by Dee Dee Ramone.

Listen to Sonic Youth's cover of 'Personality Crisis'.

Was I having nightmares or did I really read somewhere that the late Mr Genzele's replacement for this - ahem - Frankenstein creation with a Personality Crisis, is actually going to be Chrissie "Bad Girl" Hynde?

Of course, I will go and see 'em if I get the chance....

Incidentally, my understanding is that Dee Dee wrote the lyrics to Chinese Rock but the Ramones refused to record it so Richard Hell finished it off when he was working with Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders in the first incarnation of The Heartbreakers. There are demos of this version about.

forever mourning the demise of the Harry Smiths project, those records were absolute gold

he brought brian koonin along with him for that project too. he was like a different person onstage with the harry smiths. buster poindexter was famously verbose, but with the harry smiths he was respectful almost to a fault, mumbling a few brief words of introduction before each song.

those records are so good - and on that audiophile label, such an unusual thing.

yes, chesky. very fancy. i'm not sure whether i've ever heard the 2nd one.

Slight derail, but here is Tony Garnier with Robert Gordon…and Chris Spedding!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK4hDssJ9NA

i guess armond white still writes film reviews?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/david-johansen-makes-scorsese-great-again/

Great posts this year, holy shit & thanks all! Re the xpost metal gigs, I can see why he got tired of arena rock, went to Dexter, back to record-collector roots and smaller crowd intimacy and fun, sharing in-joeks and vinyl tastes w fellow veteran kidz---but man, those David Johansen albums could be really satisfying, intriguing, the way, as I mentioned on the Roxy Music Live thread, having heard the RM shift toward a new mainstream, still speculative, exploratory in the mid-to-late-70s--para-, then moving toward post-disco per se (also on that thread, others mentioned Eagles probes, milestones of the Cars, then Blondie, Talking Heads).
Johansen's s/t solo debut was exciting in part because he took the Lou Reed approach, with unrecorded or released songs from his old band along with newer ones---but also exciting, to me personally, because it was much bolder, less flimsy-seeming than Lou Reed, tapping also the best of arena rock, with JOE PERRY at the peak of Aerosmith's only great decade, and fitting him into this hip post-Dolls arena context that Reed was moving toward (realizing that it didn't have to beSally Can't Dance vs. Metal Machine Music: BOLLOCKS DICHOTOMY, as somebody virtually said way upthread, re original Alice Cooper band vs. Dolls).
So I think I actually enjoyed most of these David albums more than Dollshead xgau did, but overall his descriptions of them and BP albums later seems fair and hopefully encourages others to check them out (with so much free streaming, why the hell not)
https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist2.php?id=322

And a very refreshing interview with the B-52s on this morning's Weekend Edition reminds me that they were gonna call it a day or at least a hiatus with 1989's Cosmic Thing (with key member Rickey having died of AIDS), but then "Love Shack," on the radio and MTV, brought the bridge-and-tunnel masses surging, oh my---

agree with xgau that 'buster's spanish rocket ship,' the final buster album, is a stealth johansen solo album and worth a checkout.

The doc did touch on the Harry Smiths. Johansen talked about how he got to know Harry Smith - apparently when he was young he liked to hang with these much older individuals he found interesting because he thought they had a lot of wisdom to pass down. (It didn't sound like they were particularly close though.) Johansen does Howlin' Wolf covers really well.

Within the film, he also talked about his early dabbling in politics, specifically with Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. He knew Abbie Hoffman from that.

Again this was a Buster Poindexter show at the Carlyle. Maybe not the usual numbers under that persona, but it wasn't the Dolls' sound (which I'd actually prefer) at all, not until the last number when they do "Personality Crisis." I think Brian Koonin was the guitarist too - I'm not familiar with him so I can't remember but he was at the premiere and they do have a big credit for the band so it'll be easy to confirm when you watch it.

Musikladen apparently has a YouTube channel. Guests are really hit or miss, but some are spectacular like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiwkr8TqAEM

Also, Lincoln Center posted that Q&A for Scorsese's David Johansen film, which will be on Showtime April 14:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo29mCz_X_c

xgau on the doc ("These doubts proved somewhere between unfounded and paranoid, which I credit partly to Scorsese’s skill and more to Johansen’s genius.") https://open.substack.com/pub/robertchristgau/p/just-enough-before-its-too-late-david?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

We watched at least half of that doc on TV, and thought it was fairly basic/boring... didn't realize it was Martin Scorsese.

I can't access it yet, postponing having to confront how lukewarm I am about seeing it.

i enjoyed it -- i've spent enough time musing on the three-dimensional chess game that is his interior life that i'm not gonna stop now -- but it's not for everyone. unless you have a hankering to hear cocktail lounge versions of the johansen songs from the three dolls reunion records that nobody listened to.

Finally saw One Night Only - really enjoyed it, way more than I was expecting to tbh

Xgau’s observation in that review upthread is so otm, re the Buste persona transforming anarchic New York Dolls songs into the love songs to humanity they always were deep down

Plus you really see so clearly how deliberate Johansen is about what he chooses to reveal of himself, in all of his ventures - there is a craft to it all, even among the chaos, and so seeing the personas/poses all lined up, new and archival, alongside the interviews with his daughter was really quite moving …. the whole documentary becomes a sort of zoetrope, where if you keep your eye trained & look through the crack at just the right angle for long enough you can ~almost~ see the whole person spool out before you.

And the Carlyle performance stuff is shot so beautifully <3

Yeah, I think it was Ellen Kuras- great cinematographer, and Johansen complimented her, saying she got close without making herself seem intrusive.

I just saw it and enjoyed it but thought some of it was awkwardly edited -- the way Scorsese would suddenly cut away from old footage bugged me. Sometimes when he would go quickly from DolLs rendition to Johansen solo tour rendition to Carlyle lounge version it worked and not other times. Plus to fit in with the title and theme the lounge versions are largely longer.

Tyler W posted this old YouTube link to New York Dolls at the Waldorf Astoria on Halloween in 1973. As he noted Will Hermes wrote about this chaotic over packed late starting gig in Love Goes to a Building on Fire book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQVDL-B80d0